Volkswagen is backing VR for manufacturing across borders

Volkswagen Group has announced virtual reality applications for production and logistics enabling engineers to meet in a virtual environment to exchange ideas between the German HQ and its manufacturing locations abroad.

“All employees have access to all existing VR elements as well as existing knowledge via the platform.” – image courtesy of Volkswagen Group.

The Volkswagen Digital Reality Hub has been developed with Munich-based start-up, Innoactive, and bundles existing VR applications, users and tools in the VW Group on a single platform. The hub is making its public debut at the Digility conference and exhibition in Cologne this week.

Dennis Abmeier, of Volkswagen Group IT, explained: “Exchanging knowledge is just as important as bundling knowledge. That’s why we came up with the Volkswagen Digital Reality Hub central platform in collaboration with Innoactive.

“All employees have access to all existing VR elements. as well as existing knowledge via the platform. That way, we enable individual units to implement new use cases quickly and jointly move in VR applications so they can plan new workflows interactively.”

Mathias Synowski, a VR user from Group Logistics, described the added value of virtual reality solutions: “Going forward, we can be virtual participants in workshops taking place at other sites or we can access virtual support from experts at another brand if we are working on an optimization. That will make our daily teamwork much easier and save a great deal of time.”

Rolling out VR technologies forms an important step towards the digital, networked and efficient production of the future, with the testing and rollout of the Volkswagen Digital Reality Hub demonstrating the Group’s increasing cross-brand cooperation.

Under the umbrella of Group Logistics and ‘Digital Factory’, the Digital Realities Team is currently developing further VR applications for production and logistics for its Audi, SEAT, ŠKODA and Volkswagen brands, – all of which are expected to be accessible via the Volkswagen Digital Reality Hub common platform.